The debate surrounding the events of September 11 is being clouded by sloppy logic and analysis in the haste to say something — anything — that makes sense of the situation. One issue that has become clouded is whether it’s reasonable to talk about terrorism’s “root causes.”
Some events shatter the order of things — the routines and regularities of our lives that we rely upon for our sense of safety and our sense, most importantly, of who we are and where we are going. Some events change our perceptions forever. The world never looks the same again afterward. Suddenly, the reliable landmarks of life seem strange and distorted — recognizable, yet simultaneously weirdly unrecognizable.
About two-thirds of the way through AI, Steven Spielberg’s latest film, my mind began to wander. I remembered standing at a podium in a vast hotel ballroom in Washington D.C. several months before.
Recently, the writer Ken Wiwa argued in this space that we shouldn’t worry too much about the loss of the world’s linguistic diversity. A recent study by the Worldwatch Institute, he reported, reported that half the world’s languages may soon disappear; especially vulnerable are those indigenous tongues spoken by only a few thousand people. This prospect has raised widespread alarm, because it’s generally thought that language and culture are closely related. So, when we lose a language, it’s assumed, we lose the associated culture.
This morning I’m going to talk about “The Ingenuity Gap in a Fragmented World.” I’ll ask whether humanity can meet the ever more complex and fast-paced challenges it’s creating for itself.
The proliferation of light weapons is seriously impeding political and economic reforms in developing countries from Congo to Colombia, the author argues, and the resulting downward spiral could threaten U.S. national security.
It has been a month since we finally learned that George W. Bush will be the next president of the United States. Pundits have issued their solemn assessments of the presidential-selection process and moved on to comment on the next wave of momentous events in our adrenaline-charged political universe. But in their rush, they’ve missed a key lesson behind the fracas in Florida.
In the last century, our population on this planet has quadrupled, and most of us now live in cities. At the same time, new technologies – from antibiotics to jet planes to the internet – have vastly extended our power as individuals, groups, and societies.
We might not have much respect for them, but we should have some sympathy for the leaders of the new world we’ve created.
When a Russian icebreaker arrived at the North Pole a few weeks ago carrying a load of tourists, it found a mile-wide patch of ice-free water. It seemed like an astonishing development: indeed, reporter John Noble Wilford wrote in a front page story in the New York Times that “the last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago.” Here, it appeared, was bold evidence that global warming is finally upon us.
